Chris Eubank Sr has revealed he sported a disguise to meet Jr the night before his win over Conor Benn, to keep his appearance a surprise until the final moment.
Eubank Jr outpointed Conor Benn at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday (26 April), winning a brilliant fight, 32 years after Sr and Conor’s father Nigel rounded out their own rivalry.
Nigel was in Conor’s corner as expected, but Eubank Sr had criticised the match-up as recently as the week of the fight, labelling it a “disgrace” due to the weight disparity between the Britons. Benn, 28, went two divisions above his usual weight to face Eubank Jr, 35, at middleweight, while the latter was restricted by a rehydration clause.
Yet the stadium erupted on Saturday night when the big screens showed Eubank Sr stepping out of a car with Jr, and now the elder Eubank has explained how things came together.
The former world champion texted Eubank Jr the night before the bout, asking his son to call him once he was in private. “Jr called, and he said, ‘I didn’t want to call, dad, because I can’t hear anything negative,’” Sr explained on his YouTube channel.
“I said to Jr: ‘Okay, alright, so where are you?’ So, he explained… a Park Plaza. ‘How am I going to get in?’ Now, in my mind, you have the world’s media there. Everyone’s hanging around.
“How am I going to get in? Okay, so I put on the disguise. The disguise…When [Jr] saw me, he said, ‘No one’s going to recognise you.’
“You couldn’t see me. I had an Issey Miyake coat on, which is down to literally your ankles. I had a hoodie, which is – if you will – the mod coat: the green mod coat, the coat they wore in the 1960s on their mopeds.
“Then I had a mask that went up and a cap. The shoes I wore were plimsolls, they were trainers. They’re black.”
Eubank Sr indeed went unrecognised as he met his son, setting up Saturday night’s WWE-style reveal.
On the night of the fight, Eubank Sr insisted he had “always” planned to be present, in which Jr dealt Benn his first professional loss with three scorecards of 116-112.
After the fight, Eubank Jr was taken to hospital with a suspected broken jaw, although he was found to have no such injury and was discharged on Monday. He did, however, require eye surgery.
A rematch is on the cards for September, also at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Benn’s promoter Eddie Hearn has said.
